When Marketing Online, Social Media is Only One Piece of the Puzzle

August 30, 2009 By 4 Comments

PuzzleWith social media fever at an all-time high, it’s easy for people to lose sight of the fact that these tools are only one piece of an overall online marketing strategy.

While Facebooking, Tweeting and the like are fabulous methods, they’re not the only game in town. For best results, you want to have a mix of marketing tools in play all at once.

Who do you want to reach?

However, before you even begin implementing any marketing strategies, you’ll want to be absolutely clear about whom it is you are trying to reach. Who is your target market and what do they want? What’s your message? This is where many of my clients get stuck and it does take time and effort to discover. But once you have that, reaching that target audience becomes a whole lot easier.

Give ‘em more

At that point, much of your job focuses on driving traffic to your blog or website so that prospective clients or customers can find out more. (You DO have a website, right?) One of the best ways to increase the chances that someone will eventually buy from you is to build a list of email addresses.

As I mentioned in my previous post, you want to have a way to capture people’s email and name so that you may keep in touch with them, build trust, and make offers down the road. It’s a good idea to encourage people to provide their info by offering something in exchange, such as a free report or e-course. Then, keep yourself on their radar by sending them a regular email newsletter.

Just one slice of the pie

Social media is a terrific way to drive traffic and build your list, but it’s only one way. Consider these other techniques as well (just a few of many):

*Commenting on high traffic blogs and forums
*Writing and submitting articles to article directories like Ezinearticles.com
*Offering free teleseminars
*Guest blogging
*Utilizing your email signature
*Being a podcast or internet radio guest
*Implementing basic Search Engine Optimization on your site
*Pay Per Click (Google Adwords)

Additional pieces of the puzzle

It’s outside the scope of this post, but you should make sure you are using some form of a launch strategy when you are ready to begin selling a new product or service. Unfortunately, “if you build it they will come” doesn’t apply to online businesses. You need to create a buzz and sense of excitement about your upcoming offer to increase the chances that people will buy. This is known as the “pre-launch,” and it can make a giant difference in the number of sales that you make.

One final area I’ll mention is copy. Copywriting is an awesome skill to learn in order to make your sales pages really effective. Your words matter and they can have a huge effect on a person who is considering making a purchase from you. There are plenty of resources available to learn about this, and you don’t have to become a master of it. Knowing and using a few key techniques can really go a long way.

So, be a well-rounded marketer. Use sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube along with the other strategies I’ve suggested and the results you are looking for—more traffic, more subscribers, more clients, more sales and more money—will certainly follow.

Filed Under: Online Business Tagged With: ,

10 Easy Ways to Make Your Time on Twitter More Interactive

August 29, 2009 By 8 Comments

twitter circle and birdI always stress to clients that results on Twitter don’t happen overnight. This isn’t to discourage them from using it to enhance their marketing—but to help them understand the power of consistent, personal interactions and the cumulative effect this can have on their business.

Every time you engage others on Twitter, you are planting seeds that can have potentially big payoffs in the future. Once I explain this concept, the next concern is usually that this will be a major time investment. It’s not—if you leverage your time by applying a few of the select strategies discussed below.

Re-tweet

Re-posting others’ interesting tweets is one of the easiest and most effective ways to be discovered and gain more followers. For the people that are already following you, it’s a quick way to get on their radar screens.

Thought-provoking quote

People always seem to love great quotes. You have a good chance of being re-tweeted with these. The quotes you choose can also help you share a bit of your personality.

Feedback on someone’s link

Take a minute to visit a link someone has posted. They will often preface the link with what it’s about. If it’s of interest to you, check it out and then share your thoughts on it with the poster afterward.

Answer a question

Know the answer? Don’t be shy—share your expertise. If the particular question pertains to your niche, even better.

Ask a question

By the same token, people like to share their own knowledge. Give them an opportunity to do so.

Thank someone for their re-tweet or compliment

Gratitude is powerful and people tend to remember and appreciate when you’ve expressed it.

Respond to @ replies and direct messages

Try to respond to both the private and public messages you receive. It’s just good manners. Plus, there are lots of people who unfortunately do not do it—so exceed others’ expectations by making a habit of doing so.

Participate in #followfriday

FollowFriday is simply an event each Friday on Twitter where people recommend others to follow. After they’ve given the Twitter usernames they are recommending, they add the hashtag. If you have people in mind you think would be good to follow, let others know—there’s a good chance those you’ve recommended will return the favor.

Use Blip.fm

If you’re a music lover (who isn’t?), try using Blip.fm. Just set up a free account on their site and you can start playing DJ. Choose the option to send the songs you’ve “blipped” to Twitter. To paraphrase Madonna, music really can make the people come together. :) Of course, you don’t want to fill up your entire Twitter stream with links to your blips, but once in awhile it’s fine to share your musical tastes with others.

Post a poll

Need feedback on something? Yep, there’s a hashtag for that: #poll. People really like participating in these.

By choosing to put a few of these strategies in place each day, you’ll build momentum, raise your profile and begin noticing others re-tweeting and engaging you more. Just like real life, it’s about personality. Let that come through and it will pique others’ curiosity, drive them to seek out more info about you, and eventually lead them to click through to your site.

Commit to implementing these techniques regularly. Essentially, it comes down to two things: interacting and providing value.  You’ll begin being perceived as an expert, see yourself getting recommended by others, and be well on your way to building your own “tribe” of raving fans.

Now, you can’t say you don’t know what to tweet about!

Do you have anything to add?

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You Drove Prospects to Your Site With Social Media–Now What?

August 23, 2009 By 10 Comments

now whatBy now, I’m sure you know that being active on social media sites is a great way to drive traffic to your website or blog. But what happens once those people have arrived at your site?

You need to have a way to capture those prospects before you lose them and they click away forever. Having great content for them to enjoy once they land there is only part of the equation. You want to offer them a way to provide their email address so that you have permission to keep in touch and build that all-important, ongoing relationship with them.

Once you’ve captured their info, you then have a way to present any future offerings, events or opportunities to them. But first you’ve got to hook them in! Here are the keys to accomplishing that.

Have a sign-up form for them to input at least their first name and primary email address.

If you are using an email marketing service such as AWeber, Constant Contact or any other which provides autoresponders, you can easily create what is known as an “opt-in box” form and copy and paste the code directly onto your site. I personally use AWeber, and they provide instructions for creating the form as well as the HTML code.

Place the sign-up box in a prominent place.

Studies have shown that one of the most effective places to put the box is “above the fold,” in the upper right-hand corner of the page.  This just means that you don’t want to make the person have to scroll down to see your form. When they visit your site you want their eyes to be drawn immediately to it. A good idea is to have the box stand alone without any distracting images or text around it.

Make it crystal clear what visitors need to do.

In this case, simpler is better. The less choices people are given, the more likely they are to sign up. Describe what it is they get for giving you their information, have a place for their email address and name, a blurb on your privacy policy and a submit button.

Give an incentive for signing up with you.

These days, people are bombarded with information and offers online. You need to have a compelling reason for people to hand over their info. In exchange for doing so, give them some type of freebie–an e-course, a special report, an audio file or something else that will appeal to them. Keep in mind that this offering does not have to be super comprehensive. You can still put together something of value without it taking you more than a couple of hours to create.

Offer the ability to sign up on every page of your site.

Because you never know from which page people will enter your blog or website, be sure to place your form not only on the home page, but each page that makes up your site.

Now, when you drive all of that social media traffic that’s hungry for more of what you’ve got to offer, you have a way to continually keep in contact with them. They’ve decided to come check you out–don’t leave them without a clear next step!

Photo credit: db*photography

Filed Under: Traffic and List-building Tagged With: ,

How to Find More People to Follow on Twitter

August 22, 2009 By 5 Comments

follow meAre you on Twitter and wondering how to find more people to follow?  Twitter itself offers a few ways for you to find others: you can click on “Find people” at the top of your Twitter page and search 4 different ways.

Finding people through Twitter

The first is by searching for people by their Twitter username or by first or last name.  Second, you can find Twitter users through your other contact lists such as Gmail, AOL or Yahoo.  This is a quick way to find people because Twitter pairs the email addresses in your accounts with existing Twitter accounts.

The third option allows you to invite others by email.  The form automatically sends them a short message saying that you’d like to keep up with them on Twitter and to click a link below to find out more.

Fourth, Twitter provides a list of “suggested users” for you to follow and this includes bigger names that you don’t necessarily know personally such as JetBlue Airways, Shaquille O’Neal, the CEO of Twitter, CNN, John McCain, etc.  This is a good option if you are brand new, you aren’t sure who to follow, and want to start seeing how others use Twitter so you can get a good sense of the flow of it.

Follow who they follow

Another easy way to find people once you are following others is to check out who they follow—if anyone looks interesting, start following them.  Or, you could make a list of 20-25 people in your industry you admire and if they are on Twitter, begin following them.

A word of caution though–following too many people too fast (we’re talking by the thousands) may cause Twitter to look at you as a spammer and this could result in Twitter suspending your account.  So just be aware of that.

The actual limit appears to be that you can’t follow more than 2,000 people at first.  Once you have around 1,800 followers you can start following 10% followers more than are currently following you.  So, at 2,000 followers following you, you can follow a total of 2,200 people on Twitter.

Connect with your target market

So, how do you find and follow people in your target market so that they are able to hear your message?  Twellow.com and Wefollow.com are Twitter directories you can search by category. They’re essentially the Yellow Pages of Twitter.

If your business is local, a great way to find other local Twitter users is to use nearbytweets.com. You can use this site to search by both location and keyword.  A lot of people like to use tools like this to set up “tweetups” which are basically local meetups of Twitter users in your area.  These can be great for networking.

Another technique if you are already following some people in your target market is using whoshouldifollow.com or mrtweet.com.  Both of these sites recommend you new people to follow based on who you are following already.

Let me know if you use any other techniques to find people to connect with on Twitter.  What do you find works best for you?

Photo credit: arttwitt

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Registration Now Open for Twitter Power Strategies Webinar

August 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment

twitterLast week I had the pleasure of being a guest on Lara Galloway’s Blog Talk Radio show.  Lara is known as “The Mom Biz Coach” and is a highly sought-after coach to many successful Mom Entrepreneurs.

Lara had me on to discuss social media and how to take advantage of it in your business without getting overwhelmed.  We had a great chat and in the process discovered we both have very similar views on how to best use Twitter.

Lara and I have both had a lot of success with Twitter in terms of using it for business opportunities, joint ventures and obtaining new clients.  While all of that is great of course, what we both agreed was one of the coolest things about it is the way many people will happily spread the word about you without you having to ask.

After the interview Lara asked me to give her a call and we ended up talking about all the different things we both do that help make Twitter work so well for us.  We realized we both get a lot of the same questions from others, such as…

“I’ve been on Twitter for months now, how come I feel like I still don’t get it?”

“Why does everyone else seem to talk about how easy it is to grow their businesses and find new clients using Twitter?”

“How do people grow their lists of followers so big?”

“How do I talk about my business on Twitter without coming off sounding pushy?”

“How do I get results with spending all day tweeting?”

…and on and on.

Because of these frustrations we decided to join forces for a special 90 minute webinar on Twitter which will have plenty of time for Q and A.

Webinars are great, especially for something like Twitter because you have the whole visual element.  I think it’s going to be a lot of fun, and we are both looking forward to teaching people about all the tools, applications and strategies that have allowed the two of us to have so much success.

If you want to get a lot more out of Twitter and learn how to make it work for you, you’ll definitely want to join us on the webinar on Wednesday, August 26th at 8:30pm Eastern time.  Even if you can’t make it live, every person who signs up will get:

  • Recording of the entire webinar once it’s completed

  • Checklists of all the tools, websites, applications that will be covered by Lara and I during the webinar

  • A 20 minute brainstorming session with Lara and Christine (individually) to get your specific questions answered

and…

The confidence and know-how to get business done on Twitter! :)

Join us on August 26th by registering at this link: Twitter Power Strategies Webinar

Hope to see you there!

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Simple Ways to Measure Your Social Media Efforts

August 15, 2009 By 4 Comments

social media measurementBusiness owners are accustomed to tracking their results when it comes to marketing, whether online or off. There are certain methods for calculating your return on investment which are in most cases pretty straightforward.

Along comes social media marketing and suddenly measuring your ROI isn’t so cut and dry. I am often asked how you can tell whether the time you’ve spent on social media activities is really making a difference. Here are some easy–as well as free–ways to help determine whether your social media efforts are sizzling…or fizzling.

Profile engagement: Are people in your target market replying to you on Twitter,  inviting you to join groups on LinkedIn, commenting on your Facebook wall, and so on?

Followers and friends: I often emphasize the fact that quantity doesn’t always equal quality–but it is one indication of whether you’re being seen, heard and offering something of value.

Blog subscribers: If readers like what they see and want to be notified of each time you post, you can be sure you’ve struck a chord with them–as well as increased the possibility that they will respond well to offers you make in the future.

Newsletter subscribers: If the visitors being driven to your site by social media are being converted into e-zine subscribers, you know that you have appealed to them enough to further the relationship with you. The fact that you have their permission to communicate with them regularly will only strengthen the know, like and trust factor.

Links from other blogs: Is your site being linked to by other relevant blogs? This can indicate that you are providing valuable content as well as posting consistently.

Website metrics: Google Analytics is a free tool that makes it easy to see your page views per visitor, time spent on the site, unique visitors, frequency of visits, conversions and more.

Blog comments: Comments will tell you not only that your content is interesting, fresh and worthy of reading–but that readers are willing to stick around and take the time to engage you.

Social bookmarking/social news: Are your blog posts being voted up or bookmarked on sites like StumbleUpon, Delicious and Digg?

Products/services sold: This is the ultimate goal, obviously. All of the indicators above help give you a clearer picture of how likely it is that this goal will be reached.

So, it boils down to:  Are you being seen as an expert? Are you findable? Do people want to find out more about what it is you do?

You may not be able to equate your interactions to dollars right away, but you are planting seeds which can pay off in a big way later on.  In my eyes, that makes social media well worth most small business owners’ time.

How do you measure the impact of your social media activities?  Do you have a system for for tracking your results?

Photo credit: kevinzhengli

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How to Get Maximum Results with Facebook in Minimum Time

August 8, 2009 By 7 Comments

Clockface Closeup

One of the biggest complaints I hear related to marketing on Facebook is that “it takes WAY too much time.” This is probably the most frequent concern and fear I hear from small business owners.  It’s true that it can be a major time-suck IF you let it be—but you should know that it doesn’t HAVE to be.

Taming the Monster

You need to be a little bit ruthless with yourself, especially if you are using Facebook for both business and keeping up with friends and family.  People aren’t kidding when they say it can be addictive.  But if you’re avoiding Facebook because of these fears about it taking too much time, you’re really missing out on important networking opportunities and conversations.

This post will give you some tips and suggestions for how to really leverage your time and the strategies you can implement and focus on.  (As opposed to going in and sort of aimlessly poking around trying to figure out how anyone’s ever going to find out about your business and how you might be able to help them.)

It sounds obvious, but the biggest thing to understand is WHY you are there.  What is your strategy?  What are your goals or purpose?  Again, if you don’t know WHY you are there, it becomes a lot easier to waste time kind of aimlessly floating around.

What can you do instead?  First and foremost, alter your notification settings under “Account Settings” and “Notifications.”  Turn most of the notifications off.  You want to come to Facebook for a set amount of time and if you are getting notifications in your email about every time someone interacts with your profile you will get way too distracted because it’s tempting to log on and look.  (By the way, you also want to ignore or block frivolous applications that people want you to add—and it’s perfectly acceptable to do this.)

Facebook in Under 15 Minutes

What specifically can you do to achieve maximum visibility in minimum time?  Definitely update your status regularly.  Skim through the News Feed on the Home page which is composed of all of your friends’ updates.  If something interesting catches your eye, comment on it or hit the “like” button.

Check your Wall and if anyone has commented to you, quickly respond.  On the right hand side of the Home page, see who is having a birthday and wish them a happy one.  On the top right of your Home page, handle any requests you have waiting.  If you are a member of any groups, check in with them to see if there is any activity you can comment on or questions you can answer or ask.

If you have an event going on, such as a workshop or a teleseminar then post that using the Events application.  If you have a blog, I recommend using the “NetworkedBlogs” application to import it.  Every time you publish a new post, it gets published to your profile and this activity gets posted in the News Feed, which means all of your friends see it as well.  You can also use the Notes application to import your blog posts, which then get posted to your Wall.

Content is King

Using social media effectively is all about content.  How do you keep a steady stream of fresh content filling up your profile? One way is to post links to interesting sites or articles you come across by adding the Share on Facebook bookmarklet to your browser.  Say you’re on CNN.com and you want to post a link to a story on Facebook, you can use that bookmarklet to post it automatically—without even needing to sign into your account.

If you use Twitter, install the application on Facebook called “Selective Twitter Status.” The way this works is that anytime you tweet something that you would also like posted to your Facebook status, you simply add a hashtag (which is the pound sign) and the letters “fb” to your tweets.  I like this app better than the regular Twitter one because I don’t always want all of my tweets cluttering up my Facebook profile—plus not everyone on Facebook understands Twitter lingo.

Two other great tools that can really leverage your time are Ping.fm and Hootsuite. These update the status of multiple social networking profiles simultaneously including Facebook so that you don’t even need to go to the actual sites to do so.

I need to emphasize that the News Feed is probably THE most powerful aspect of all of Facebook.  I have heard people refer to it as contributing to “viral visibility” or “ambient awareness” and I love that, because that is exactly what it is.

A Piece of Your Marketing Plan

So, block out time to use Facebook in your schedule.  People laugh, but set a timer if you need to. Think of it as part of your marketing strategy, just as other marketing activities are.  If you are brand new to Facebook, yes, you may need to spend and hour a day getting acclimated and developing your profile in the beginning, but you can really make an impact in much shorter amounts of time once you have gotten used to how it all works.

These are some of the strategies I use in my regular Facebook routine—do you have any to add?  Let me know in the comments.

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Twitter Power! A Fan Gets to Work with a Fave Author

August 4, 2009 By 7 Comments

Making a Living Without a Job*This is one in an occasional series aimed at communicating the different ways social media has changed and continues to boost my own business.

Yesterday I had the distinct pleasure of being contacted through Facebook by one of my favorite authors and “jobless muse” Barbara Winter.  (@joblessmuse on Twitter)

Barbara wrote what I consider one of the best books around on becoming self-employed, expressing your creative self through your work and making an income doing what you love.  She calls Making a Living without a Job—originally published in 1993 and slated for a revised and updated release this month—her “handbook for self-bossers.”

It’s a fantastic guide and one that certainly brought me great enjoyment and comfort over the last several years while on my journey of re-discovering what it is I want to be “when I grow up.”

Starting the Conversation

I came across Barbara on Twitter several months back and we began following each other.  I put on my gushing fangirl hat for a moment and let her know how much I loved her book and appreciated all she does on her website over at JoyfullyJobless.com. She provides a lot of support for entrepreneurs and wannabe-entrepreneurs through her blog, teleclasses, seminars and learning courses.

Over the past few months we exchanged several replies and direct messages, including some silly ones about our love for the Swiffer commercials with the bad 70s and 80s music.  I appreciated how Barbara would often re-tweet some of the info and links I provided related to growing a business with social media as well as some advice she provided me through Facebook recently.

She contacted me yesterday to find out if I would be interested in presenting a teleclass with her on social media marketing for her community.  We chatted on the phone about it and have scheduled the call for Monday, August 24th.  I was honored and excited to say the least.  It’s a great example of how sites like Twitter can 1) connect you with with great people you admire and can learn from 2) expose you to new communities that you may be able to help 3) build relationships that lead to opportunities and partnerships in your business or career and 4) cause you to do a happy dance because you get to work with a kick-butt author and all-around cool lady. :)

What it Really Means to “Connect”

If I hadn’t cultivated the relationship with her over time I might have well been just another Tweeter who likes to post social media “stuff” in her Twitter stream.  But by reaching out, making the effort to engage and responding to her questions and comments while at the same time providing helpful content, tips and info not necessarily directed just at her—I’ve been able to enjoy this opportunity to present to her “folks.”

Gotta love Twitter power!

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Do These Reasons for Avoiding Social Networking Sound Familiar?

August 1, 2009 By 5 Comments

I recently read a short but very much on point article from July 22nd on Entrepreneur.com.  It was entitled 5 Misplaced Social Networking Fears and I was immediately drawn in by the notion of “misplaced fears” in the title.

It’s an accurate way to describe what I have been seeing so in many clients, prospective clients, colleagues and seasoned offline fear eyenetworkers that I know.  Like the author, I also often wonder why online networking hasn’t been embraced more among certain small business owners.

I’m not really talking about those who are so technologically out of the loop that they don’t even have a website for their business yet.  Granted, I suppose their are still some out there who are doing just fine without one.  I’m talking about those who may have an internet presence with their website already, but don’t see how reaching out and easily connecting with hundreds if not thousands of prospects through social networking might be worth their time.

Clearly, the internet allows one to network on a much larger scale than by doing so locally in person.  Face to face time is obviously still a viable way to get new business, but why stop there simply because it’s been the traditional way to do so?

The fears the Entrepreneur article list as being some of the most common are also the ones I see most often: being stuck in the old mode of doing things, too many overwhelming choices, skepticism about its effectiveness, fear of making mistakes and fears about lack of privacy.

While these are certainly understandable concerns, none of them need to keep you permanently on the sidelines.

It’s perfectly ok to test the waters first before jumping in and to start slowly.  Realizing that social sites are increasingly “where the people are” will help you begin seeing that it’s not much different than a large networking event you’d participate in locally.  The method may look different, but the idea is the same—making valuable connections.

Regarding privacy, know that the major social sites out there provide you with numerous ways to control what it is you do and don’t share.  Become familiar with what your options are and do this first thing, before engaging in the conversation.

There is so much opportunity online to expand your network, broaden your reach and grow your business—I’d hate to see you miss out by being needlessly afraid.

Are you still hesitating?  Let me know in the comments whether your fears and concerns are still holding you back from incorporating social networking into your own marketing plan.

If you’re curious about learning how an effective online marketing and social media strategy could help transform your own business, then contact me for a free 20 minute phone consultation to see if I’m the right resource for you.

Photo credit: OTH

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